Stick With What Works

November 26, 2002|By SUSAN CAMPBELL; Courant Staff Writer Susan Campbell is at campbell@courant or at 860-241-6454.

The car started rattling recently. To be honest, I know enough to keep the radio cranked once a car's odometer passes 130,000 or so. That way, you miss noises that might otherwise dent your pastoral.

The rattle has probably been there awhile. My car and I have traveled 145,000 miles together. It is both right and expected that something would rattle. A car is rolling evidence of the American idea of built-in-obsolescence, an obsolescence that seems to be speeding ever faster toward us as we achieve, then lose, then achieve again world dominance.

Didn't washers and dryers once last a lifetime? I've had four so far, and I'm not dead yet. Whoever heard of having to replace, say, a hand mixer? I'm on my fifth. And don't get me started on home computers, because if you do we could be here all night.

So it goes that you retire your car payments, only to find yourself spending the equivalent on upkeep. Like a rotten boyfriend, a car will cost you, will break your heart and, finally, will leave you forever.

I pay attention to rattles. What today is merely annoying can tomorrow mean you're stranded on I-84, relying on the kindness of strangers. So there I was, crawling under the car to see if by chance there was something loose that I would both notice and be able to tighten. And I saw it -- a piece of muffler hanging off, like an orange peel.

I looked over at my assistant, the dog, and it came to me: Duct tape!

So it is of duct tape I sing, that handy fix-all, which serves as a shining medal to do-it-yourself-ism. Books have been written about the uses of duct tape. Anecdotally, a person without duct tape is, well, just not prepared for the vagaries of life. You have to love it. You have to use it. You have to be thankful for it as well. And used properly, duct tape will release you from your classism.

Duct tape was everywhere when I grew up -- the back of a couch where the fabric was torn, a table leg, the earpieces of certain eyeglasses of fashion-less family members. But I didn't notice until the cleats my brother wore for football began to fall apart, and he began repairing them with the gray tape I'd seen everywhere. By the time he graduated from high school, the shoes were completely covered and had grown to be big and bulky, like a clown's.

The week after I moved into my first apartment, I began hosting dinner parties where I tried out on family members things from the international pages of my Betty Crocker cookbook. When I invited the other brother, he came with a big, honking roll of duct tape wrapped with a bow. He told me no well-appointed home was complete without it.

I laughed and stuffed the roll in the back of the drawer I reserved for my brand-new tools. A week later, when a leaky water hose created a fountain in my rented bathroom, I pulled out the tape, wrapped that sucker tight and voila! Insta-plumber!

It's a sealant, a bandage, a way to tape down snaking microphone cords, a cover for that pesky ``Check Engine'' light on the dashboard. In his senior year of high school, my son contemplated building a suit out of it, entering a national contest and perhaps taking home a $10,000 prize. He opted out, and I was a little relieved. We are middle class, and duct tape is -- well -- not. You think you outgrow these things. You think you get a good job, pay to have your children's teeth straightened, take the family to Florida, and think, ``Yes! I have clawed my way up to the middle class! I've arrived!''

You see duct tape, and you see defeat. You earn a good paycheck and can afford to pay mechanics to fix your broken things. Or, more likely, you simply go out and buy new things and abandon along the way a pile of appliances and hard goods that no longer serve you.

You abandon, too, your need for things like duct tape.

But in reality? You don't. And in a weird way, I'm thankful for that, as well.